I have had an active imagination since I was young. Since I was 12 years old I have always imagined what it would be like to be a missionary. Travel the world telling people about God and helping anyone who needed it.
I still daydream quite a bit about one day moving overseas but my daydreams are quite different today. When I first began imagining what being a missionary would be the picture I painted out in my head where much like the images my memory had retained of Tijuana, Mexico, the only poverty I had encountered. On the hillsides of the city sat shacks constructed out of scraps people find laying around. This is all I knew as poverty. Poverty, people living in what most children in the US would call a clubhouse. That was all I thought was to it. At 12 years old the thought of going up against what I knew as poverty did not seem daunting, terrifying, or near impossible. It seemed like the way I am suppose to spend my life.
Today the word poverty means more to me then people living in shacks. It is people who are sick, starving, hurting, without care, without help, without Him.
People who are lost.
Today the thought of one day being an overseas missionary is daunting, terrifying, near impossible, and the way I am suppose to spend my life.
Everyday a new fear pops into my head. I’m too disorganized, too shy, too scared of flying, too easily grossed out, too emotional, too attached to my family, too young, not knowledgeable enough to be an overseas missionary.
And everyday God finds some way of kicking that fear right out of my head.
I guess what I am trying to say is no matter how scared I get of this path God has lead me to I am not giving up. No matter how much the new things I am learning about this path scares me I am not going to turn my back on it.
Booyah!